The Daughter of an Empress eBook

The senators departed with bitter murmurs and severe
threats. Count Alexis Orloff remained, and the
cowardly senate, trembling with fear of this young
Russian empire, had silently pocketed the humiliation
of seeing this over-bearing Russian within their walls
for several weeks longer. This evidence of the
haughty insolence of Count Orloff was related among
the Romans with undisguised pleasure, and they thanked
him for having thus humiliated and insulted the proud
and imperious republic. But they suspiciously
shook their heads when they learned that he seemed
disposed to display his pride and arrogance in Rome!
They told of a soiree of the Marchesa di Paduli
which Alexis Orloff had attended. As they there
begged of him to give some proof of the very superior
strength which had acquired for him the name of “the
Russian Hercules,” he had taken one of the hardest
apples from a silver plateau that stood upon the table
and playfully crushed it with two fingers of his left
hand. But a fragment of this hard apple had hit
the eye of the Duke of Gloucester, who was standing
near, and seriously injured it. The sympathies
of the whole company were excited for the English prince,
and he was immediately surrounded by a pitying and
lamenting crowd. Count Orloff alone had nothing
to say to him, and not the slightest excuse to make.
He smilingly rocked himself upon his chair, and hummed
a Russian popular song in praise of his empress.

And was it not also an insult for Alexis Orloff now
to show himself a friend to the Jesuits, whom the
decree of God’s vicegerent had outlawed and
proscribed? Was it not an insult that he loudly
and publicly promised to these persecuted Jesuits
a kind reception and efficient protection in Russia,
and invited them to found new communities and new
cloisters there?

But Alexis Orloff cared little for the dissatisfaction
of the Romans, He said to his confidant Stephano:
“There is no greater pleasure than to set at
defiance all the world, and to oppose all these things
which the stupid people would impose upon us as laws.
The friend and favorite of the Empress Catharine has
no occasion for complying with such miserable laws;
wherever I set my foot, there the earth belongs to
me, and I will forcibly maintain my pretensions whenever
they are disputed! In Russia I am the serf of
the empress, in revenge for which I will, at least
abroad, treat all the world as my serfs. This
gives me pleasure, and wherefore is the world here
but to be enjoyed?”

“A little also for labor,” said Stephano,
with a sly smile.

“For that I have my slaves, for that I have
also you!” responded Orloff, laughing.
“There is only one labor for me here in Rome,
and that is to create as much disturbance as possible
in the city; to set the people at odds with the government,
so that they may have their hands full, and find no
time for observing our nice game with our little princess,
or to interfere with it. We must have freedom
of action, that is the most important. Hence
we must protect these pious Jesuits, and offer support
to the enemies of this too-enterprising pope, by which
means we shall ultimately attain our own ends, and
that is enough for us!”